February 10, 2015

A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Last Wednesday was not a good day. The army has not been kind to us lately. I've been feeling very out of control. I'm not quite ashamed to say that there were tears when my alarm went off on this day because it "all" just sucks my energy and time and goodwill and sometimes showing up at work is all I can manage. Let alone putting on an entertaining show for students.

By 6am, the day was already in a downward spiral. Disappointing. I was frustrated about all these things that I wanted to be able to control. My health, Scott's job, what the future holds, etc.

It was then that my precious Macbook slid from its perch on the back of the couch and fell facedown on the hardwood with a thud. It was shut, but landed screen-side down. While I was horrified, I didn't expect total ruination. I opened it up and my first thought was How did all that dog hair get on the screen? because it looked like dog hairs were sticking to the glass. Turns out that they were cracks because then I saw the shards of glass all over the keyboard.

It was just kind of an Oh reaction. Like Oh, I effed that one up. Oh, perfect. Oh, ugh....
But there were no tears. There was no crying to the heavens about my rotten luck. And I knew I couldn't fix it, so I didn't try. I didn't fret about what went wrong. Or how I could make it better. It was shattered and that was that. It was beyond my power. Ah, beyond. my. power. This was bad luck, yes. But I think it was also a sign that I needed to stop my train of thought and redirect it somewhere else.

It was an expensive sign, though. The thing worked well enough for me to Google "macbook repair colorado springs". The Apple website told me it was unfixable, but Apple could review my case and decide if they would/could fix it. It would be between $500-700. For a minute, I thought, I could make this work. People deal with cracked iPhone screens all the time. Nothing wrong with that. But every time I closed it and opened it, more shards of glass would break loose. That's not healthy for human nor animal. Plus, it was just the glass at this point and I didn't want to damage it further. I googled Best Buy to see what a replacement would cost (because Apple told me it was irreparable). $1,100. So, no.

I called The Mac Corner in Colorado Springs the second they opened and I spoke with Quentin. I was hesitant about the whole thing, but Quentin said, "Oh yeah. I can fix it. If you bring it in now, I'll have it done by the end of the day." What?! Efficient customer service in the Springs? Unheard of. Because of the job thing, I couldn't do that, so I dropped it off at 4:00. There was also an issue with the hard drive (I knew this previously but had been avoiding it), and Quentin said it'd be done in the morning. I told him there'd be no hurry because I was going to be at work anyway. He called by 1pm on Thursday to say I could pick it up. It was as good as new. I seriously couldn't believe it. It was $175 plus tax for the screen replacement. The hard drive fix was a bit extra and it did involve me reinstalling some programs, but nothing I couldn't do (which meant it had to be easy). There was a 10% military discount also, which I appreciated.

Lesson learned. Stop carrying my computer from room to room. It will drop and break eventually. Also, that kind of behavior damages the hard drive.

I hate to hear this, girl. When things aren't going well, I'm convinced that being a teacher is one of the most difficult things in this world - because, like you said - we constantly have to put on a show for the kids. And that's just exhausting. I'm so sorry to hear that things are going like you want. Thank God for Quentin! Hope things start looking up for you soon!

Ugh, hate that feeling! Our poor Mac has been knocked off the table a couple of times by either us or our dog, but so far it's survived other than a couple of dents in the outside case :/ although the one we had before got water spilled on it (not by us) and it was fried. Had to replace that one, no fun! I'm glad yours was fixable!

I hate when things like this happen--but it's so often one of those obvious signs from God that's like "HEY! LADY! YOU'RE NOT IN CONTROL HERE." I'm so glad it was a relatively easy (though semi-expensive though not as expensive) fix. I'm praying so hard for you, friend. I'm so glad Quentin was able to take such good care of you--thank God for good people, huh?

That sounds horrendous! I would cry, no doubt about that. Now if you find something funny and laugh, you'll feel better for about 10 seconds. I've been there and I have lots of experience with misery. Do I have to fix my blogger account? I like being lazy and putting in my email address in the comments. Estherdavison@gmail.com

My Mac died a horrible death in college. My roommate's cat knocked it off of our bar. It shouldn't have been on the bar to begin with but it was rough. My wasn't salvage-able. Glad your's was! Hope you start to feel better.